Breakthroughs in states requiring voting equipment to support fair election methods

The California draft Help America Vote
Act (HAVA) plan was released on June 17. It has very clear
language about promoting compatibility with instant runoff / ranked choice
ballots and with cumulative voting. The Massachusetts final HAVA
plan and Vermont's HAVA report also have strong language
about equipment supporting instant runoff voting, and New Jersey's HAVA report
has language about proportional voting methods in general. See
excerpts and links below.

In addition, legislation moving in New York state on
voting equipment has clear language on ranked-choice systems. The
bill, which passed the assembly on June 19, states that new voting
machines must "possess the capacity to, or capacity to be easily
modified so as to, provide for ranked order voting and cumulative
voting." The senate will take up the bill in the fall.

As we have argued in our national testimony, we
believe the case is strong that requiring this capacity when
obtaining new equipment is cost-free, while waiting to add it to
existing equipment in the future can be very expensive. We believe
this is likely true of other potential democratic innovations that
are well worth seeking to anticipate in the purchasing stage.

In addition to information to links from states
referenced above, you also will find below information about the
Michigan NAACP's support for standards in support of fair election
methods and about FairVote Minnesota's efforts to promote these
standards in its state.

Hava Compliance With Voting Systems
StandardsIn consultation with local elections officials
and other interested parties, including an advisory committee
constituted for those purposes by the Secretary of State, and after
considering any voluntary guidelines adopted by the Commission
pursuant to Subtitle B of Title III, California will, through the
regulatory, legislative, voting system certification and
decertification processes, or otherwise, comply with HAVA, including
the replacement of voting systems that do not comply. In order to
help restore the integrity of the voting process, increase the
opportunity for all eligible citizens to participate in that
process, and to comply with HAVA, the State, under the direction of
the Secretary of State, as Chief Elections Officer,11 will, in
conjunction with the consultation referred to above, in part:

support, promote and
encourage the use of direct recording electronic (DRE/touchscreen)
voting systems, at polling places in California, and optical scan
systems that are used for tabulating vote-by-mail ballots, that
are compatible with alternative voting methods such as ranked
ballot and cumulative voting...

consider, through established processes,
decertifying systems and refusing to certify systems that cannot
accommodate alternative voting systems, such as ranked ballots and
cumulative voting systems, in a manner in which voters can easily
understand;

regularly evaluate voting systems to assess
error rates, reliability and accuracy factors, accessibility to
voters with disabilities, language assistance needs and literacy
needs, and ability to accommodate alternative voting systems; work
with local elections officials to share information and make
improvements...

In an effort to retain the integrity of the voting
process, increase theopportunity for all eligible citizens to
participate in that process, and to comply with HAVA, the
Commonwealth, under the direction of the Secretary of the
Commonwealth, as Chief Elections Officer, will, in
part:

(d) develop voting system standards
requiring, as part of certificationprocess, that the system
demonstrate the ability to support a representative set of possible
future ballot procedure changes, including instant runoff voting, as
feasible, with an upgrade cost that is substantially less than the
cost of complete system replacement...

The Vermont HAVA plan contains
this sentence on page 12 discussing the requirements of new voting
machines. They must be able to ...
"Export an anonymous record of
each vote into a secure data file in order to support the option to
use rank order ballots or instant runoff voting.

Key reference is on page 25
in Section 4 on voting machines: "Further, explicit power
should be granted to the Attorney General, on the basis of the
voting machine committee recommendations, to de-certify any voting
machine that is shown to not meet HAVA requirements. In short,
current law has been outpaced by the growing technological advances
and must be revised. Any such revision to statutes or
regulations should be flexible enough to consider the
capability of a voting system to adapt to changes in voting
procedures, such as proportional or cumulative voting, which are
concepts being considered in other jurisdictions."

"Most Californians register to vote not because a political cause has touched their heart, but rather because they checked a box on a form at the Department of Motor Vehicles when they received or renewed their driverís license."